From Dulong to Beas: Flow of the
soul: A review

It
is a 71-page poetic document of the extra-ordinaryjourneys both mundane and
metaphysical undertaken by the celebrated bi-lingual young poet from Kolkata,
India, Jaydeep Sarangi. In fact, these are the rare visions granted by forces
beyond the pale of the physical or the rational realms to very few privileged
souls; stark visions that hover over the misty in-between regions of the
immediacy and the meta-physical. They both familiarize and de-familiarize the
everyday; the intensity of the felt immediacy is transformed into remote,
almost exalted glimpses of truth, poetically conveyed to fellow travelers keen
to map out this topography of human soul---a mixture of both earthly and
divine. Jaydeep Satangi, through this slim volume of lyrical meditations,
seer-like, discharges a role denied to lesser poets: A soul-maker. It is his
coinage but very apt: A poet has the capacity to recover the visions given to
early seers who all were poets and early poets who were all seers. Great poetry
is a valiant attempt to re-claim that lost territory, the magical country situated
somewhere between desert and snowy mountains, seen by a striving mind only.
Look at this simple assertion:

LIFE BEYOND

All morning I sat at the arm chair
Hands folded and ponder over limitless waste,
Ratan babu’s ghat falls flat

Between the mundane and the
metaphysical.

A clarion call

From somewhere takes me to strange
part of life

Where I am the instrument among
living divides.

I remain, as the crow

Time keeper for oral narration

For centuries to come. (emphasis
added)

Poiesis
is, on the evidence of the Ancient Greeks, making/ creating something. In the
celebrated Symposium recorded by Plato for the post-modern, rational
skeptics like us who spout agnosticism about the possibilities of the other
worlds seen by the likes of Homer or Hesiod, Diotima speaks of the three
poiesis: natural, urban and in the soul through a careful cultivation of virtue
and knowledge. Highest priority is accorded to third one by the priestess in
this Socratic dialgoue. This distinction is crucial template for any maker of Beauty
in these strife-torn times: Human soul, in poiesis process, can attain a
heightened awareness of the divine---the illuminating site of the virtuous and
logos, the ultimate enlightening experience. Poetry symbolizes that ascent
through the phenomenal world to the spiritual. A poet must constantly strive
for the spiritual contained in the mundane---very much like the Silenus
statues. Jaydeep does that for a whole culture of instant gratification and
quick, deliberate amnesia engineered by the merchants of mass market. He is
poised delicately over the dross and the divine in his wanderings as a poet
with X-ray eyes and inquisitive mind, deconstructing the power narratives,
reversing roles, desperate for a conversation. His empathies are for the
deprived and the downtrodden, a rare province for the poets of Indian English,
more worried about the calibrated response of the Guardian to their
Booker-nominated novels soaked in drug-haze than the plight of the fellow
Indians in an abject caste system that power elite does not want to dismantle
for the expediency of the vote politics:

But
his message is uplifting. Through a careful weaving of racial memory,
history, current politics, naturalism, cultural references, Sarangi creates a
powerful concoction:

LIVING ALONE

(A poem dedicated to dalit
writers of West Bengal)

Sad wings twitter

as my body surrenders

in the snow peaks of Rotang.

I am more strong than ever

I touch the blue sky

And I remember what I loved!

You blame me as ‘weakness’.

I bounce back with my white dress

On the banks of river Beas.

No matter what I do

I experience the ultimate

In the sad terrace of my Kolkata
home.

The ventilator blocks

Air from outside

As my wife wishes me on bed!

I read letters of Swamiji

And take lessons from my dearest one

Near scenic Beas.

I remember

How Kalyani ,Meena and
others

Through hard labour and strength
within

Fight for their right.

They write

As they have no arrow to lift.

My lonely inside

Whispers in a lonely midnight
street

When no bird sing and no priest
chant.

Or, look at this strange blend,
mixing desire with memories:

SAP IS HISTORY

The sap is my nation

History of the land;

How my forefathers settled

On the bank of dulong.

These green fields

These castles of mud and goats

All I owe.

I remember my first day

At school

That was the last.

May father got me a youth of ten

And my love ended on bed.

I sit near the bank of Dulong

And whisper in love lost

Like long trees in autumn

Barren as history books

Where dry hard thoughts

Write their names in black ink.

Alcohol connected

In a finer tune near muddy rain
water.

Suddenly, green turf turned
greener.

All
these are the creations issuing forth, bringing forth in the classic Martin
Heidegger sense of poiesis: Changing the stasis into ecstasies. Jaydeep
Sarangi, in his cult book, From Dulong to Beas, successfully captures the
essence of the Indian experience in all its complexities. Whitman-like, he
hears India singing, and, records some of the precious glimpses afforded to a
soul attuned to such ethereal whisperings from rolling landscapes and temporal
shifts in a geography going back to Vedic times:

There
are journeys outside the immediate framework also. In a sense, it is a search
for meaningful alliances in shifting landscapes located within the context of
globalization. It is a way of reaching out, to renew tired clichés, to retrieve
the lost narratives.

In
this sense, Sarangi is indeed a unique soul-maker: He renews our chipped souls
running after the tangibles and makes us aware that real wealth lies inside a
beautiful soul, not outside. In this sense, he is a real maker of new
aesthetics for the Indian poetry in English.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Dr
Jaydeep Sarangi is a bilingual writer, academic, editor,
translator, academic administrator and the author of a number of significant
publications (including twenty nine
books) on Postcolonial issues, Indian Writing in English, Australian Literature
and Creative Writing in reputed journals/magazines in India and abroad. He is
the mentor of many academic and literary peer reviewed journals and has been
taken the editorial board of several refereed journals in India and abroad
like, Mascara Literary Review
(Australia), Virtuoso(Hyderabad),Cavalcade
(Nigeria), Pegasus (Agra), The Okigbo Review (Nigeria), Unheard Melody , Parnassus (RaeBarelly) Prosopisia(Ajmer), Labyrinth(Gwalior),Indian Journal of World Literature and Culture
(Bhubaneswar), IJPCL (Kerala), Scholastic International Journal of Language
and Literature (Chennai) , Reflections (Tezu),ArsArtium, (Ghaziabad),Conjunctions- An International Refereed Journal
of Language, Literature & Culture(Jalandhar).He edits "New Fiction Journal" ( ISSN
0978 – 6863).He has collaborated as peer reviewer for CLR,Universitat Jaume I,Spain. He
is one of the Editors, "Writers Editors Critics"
and the Vice President, GIEWEC (head
office at Kerala). He is one of the founder members and the Vice
President of SPELL(Society for Poetry,Education,Literature and
Language)in Kolkata. Dr Sarangi has delivered keynote address in
several national and international seminar and conferences. His Bengali book of
poems, “Lal Palasher Renu”
has been reviewed extensively. His latest book of poems is "From Dulong to Beas" (New
Delhi,2012). Dr. Paula Hayes (USA) in her Introduction to the book
comments, “a few of Jaydeep’s poems reach toward asking metaphysical
questions.” Professor Dora Sales of University Jaume I ,Castellón, Spain
comments , “As we all know, India has a rich literary tradition. JaydeepSarangi
is a splendid member of this endless family. Truly, a poet of note.”Dr Sarangi's
poems ,articles and reviews have appeared in different refereed
international journals and magazines in several countries.His latest book of poems in english,SILENT DAYS was launched at UWA,Perth,Australia on the 27th May 2013. He has guest edited
two successive issues for muse india on marginal literatures from
the Eastern India and the North East.He has been invited as resource
person/writer in several universities in India and abroad.
Dr. Jaydeep Sarangi is with the Deptt. of English at Jogesh Chandra
Chaudhuri College (Calcutta University), 30,Prince Anwar Shah
Road,Kolkata-700033,WB, India.